When the fabulous Los Angeles Olympic Auditorium opened its doors to the public on August 5,
1925, it was one of the most gala events of its time. The concrete structure located at the corner
of 18th Street and Grand Avenue had a distinct air of class which pervaded it. Measuring 260' by
162', it had one huge ground floor, which sloped gradually away from the boxing ring in the
center, and an enormous balcony which stretched diagonally away in every direction toward the
roof. There were no pillars, and every one of the 15,300 seats had a perfectly clear and
unobstructed view of the arena. It felt like a boxing arena. Except for the first 17 rows, the fans sat in seats which had been steeply tiered from the lower
floor to the balcony, so that a spectator could always see over the
person in front of him.

The program that evening consisted of five six round fights, preceded by bands, speeches, and
presentations. Just about everybody who was anybody was there, including past and present
boxing champions, motion picture stars, politicians, and society matrons. The referees were clad
in dress suits, and the bejeweled spectators in upholstered chairs were similarly dressed, making
the event look more like a grand opera than a prize fight.

Contrary to what may have been reported much later, Newsboy Brown did not fight Young
Nationalista that night. A copy of the card, from the Los Angeles Times of August 5, 1915, is
shown below.

Young Nationalista fought Sammy Shack, and Newsboy Brown fought Frankie Grandetta.
Brown, who was described by one reporter as looking like a small edition of a piano mover,
pasted Grandetta's split eye and took the decision.

Newsboy Brown went on to fight many more bouts in the Olympic Auditorium,
where he became a local favorite over the next decade. In the ensuing years,
the Olympic hosted scores of world
championship fights and attracted such celebrity boxing fans as Al
Jolson, Barbara Stanwyck, Steve McQueen, Sylvester Stallone and
James Caan.

The central location of the Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles enabled
fans to come from all over by car or, in the early days, street
car. Once inside, the spectators in the balcony might play cards
and talk boxing while waiting for the first event. The smell of hot
dogs and mustard wafted through the air. "That Olympic had the magic," said
one fight fan and former boxing
promoter. "It was steamy in there and it was boxing like the guy
said-down and dirty . . . with those tight, little dressing rooms
with the low ceilings. You almost felt claustrophobic."
It was an atmosphere conducive to yelling
and getting involved. That atmosphere,
he said, is missing at modern
facilities like the Forum and other citadels of "yuppie boxing."

When the Olympic was not being used for boxing it was the set for the original "Rocky" and "Requiem
for a Heavyweight" movies, and it
gathered in hundreds of thousands of wrestling and roller derby
fans. Briefly, it even served as a home for USC and UCLA
basketball.

But as time went on the grand old auditorium fell into a state of disrepair. Writing in 1987, a reporter for the
Los Angeles Times observed that the dressing rooms at the Olympic Auditorium looked like
the inside of a World War II bunker and the rest of the arena was in no better repair.
And so for more than seven years the only surviving major American arena built expressly for boxing remained boarded up.

Eventually, in 1994 an Eastern lawyer named Bob Arum had it renovated and brought boxing back to it.
It reopened on March 5, 1994 with a card including a championship match in which Oscar De La Hoya,
America's only boxing gold medalist at the 1992 Olympics, won his first pro title
with a 10th-round knockout of World Boxing Organization junior
lightweight champion Jimmi Bredahl.